Friday 15 December 2017

Etsy Shop: shoutjohncards

Hey everyone :)


I've been trying to think - when I decided that I wanted to open my little Etsy shop and I really can't remember - is that a bad thing?! I remember I was looking for cards for a birthday and some Christmas ones and I couldn't find any I liked and I thought to myself - why not just make them myself - and so I spent a good couple of months (before opening the shop) researching the most popular card sizes and companies that did those sizes - there are lots!

I then bought a new printer and different cards and envelopes ... then found out you could buy card pre-creased (thats with the fold down the middle already - I know mind blown!!) and then logo designing and then testing designs and spending ages and lots of ink - printing them to see what they looked like - "shoutjohncards" was born - an extension of shoutjohn (my blog).

Feel free to take a look: www.shoutjohncards.co.uk

There are only a few cards on there at the moment as I am splitting my time between full-time work / blogging / YouTube / card making and well life (you know housework, boyfriend, social life etc).

Let me know what you think in the comments below or if you have any tips those are always welcome :)



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Sunday 3 December 2017

I Moved House!

Hey everyone :)


I've been absent on social media for a couple of months now - but I have a good reason! I have moved house! Yes I finally left my little 1 room and moved into a lovely 2 bed flat with Dave.

It's been a long process and lots of waiting to find out if we got the flat but all that paid off and we are now moved in. We've been there nearly 2 months.

So I have plans for a few posts that involve "house-ey" things so I am excited about that. We are just waiting on 1 more sofa being delivered and some artwork for the walls and then hopefully we will be finished decorating.

I'm also looking forward to getting a few Christmas posts written up :)




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Sunday 24 September 2017

Summoner's War: Light Paladin Recipe

Hey everyone :)


So Com2Us announced the new recipe for the Nat 5 Light Paladin ... so I thought I'd put it into a little more detail - you can see what you need for each recipe.

Similar to the other recipes - each monster must be 4* awakened and maxed to level 30.
The next level must all be 5* awakened and maxed to level 35.

Recipe costs are still the same at 100,000 mana for first fusion, then 500,000 mana for the final fusion.

Fire Harp Magician (Harmonia):
Fire Witch (Rebecca)
Water Warbear (Dagora)
Fire Vagabond (Kai'en)
Wind Fairy (Aeilene)

Water Samurai (Kaz):
Water Martial Artist (Luan)
Water Inferno (Purian)
Wind Magical Archer (Ardella)
Fire Elemental (Bremis)

Wind Kung Fu Girl (Ling Ling):
Wind Grim Reaper (Hiva)
Wind Charger Shark (Zephicus)
Fire Inugami (Raoq)
Water Imp (Fynn)


Light Cow Girl (Loren)


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You might be asking where you can farm/get these from ... I've also put that below too:

Fire Witch (Rebecca) - not farmarble, try scrolls or the wish fountain
Water Warbear (Dagora) - farmable from any level on Mt. White Ragon
Fire Vagabond (Kai'en) - get from Secret Dungeon
Wind Fairy (Aeilene) - get from Secret Dungeon or your shop

Water Martial Artist (Luan) - not farmarble, try scrolls or the wish fountain
Water Inferno (Purian) - get from Secret Dungeon
Wind Magical Archer (Ardella) - get from Secret Dungeon
Fire Elemental (Bremis) - farmable from any level on Vrofagus Ruins

Wind Grim Reaper (Hiva) - farmable from any level on Aiden Forest
Wind Charger Shark (Zephicus) - not farmarble, try scrolls or the wish fountain
Fire Inugami (Raoq) - farmable from any level on Faimon Volcano
Water Imp (Fynn) - get from Secret Dungeon

Light Cow Girl (Loren) - get from Secret Dungeon

Hope this is a helpful little post. Let me know in the comments below how far you are at getting all these mons?!


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Saturday 9 September 2017

LUSH Bubble Spinner

Hey everyone :)


I recently checked the Lush website and came across this magnificent beauty they were selling. I'm sure you are all aware of the fidget spinner craze that took the world - well Lush brought this out and named it the "bubble spinner".

Now I'm lazy so I ordered it from the website as my nearest Lush shop is 6 miles away in another town. It cost £4.95 which I think is a decent price for a reusable bubble bar.

The bubble spinner is made with grapefruit oil, lemon oil and lime oil so a very citrus-themed bubble bar. It smells amazing and reminds me of tropical holidays.

The bubble bar - as I mentioned is reusable meaning it will last for a few baths. It is pink, blue and yellow and has a wooden holder in the middle that does actually let you spin it.



I think it's such a cool little thing to buy for the bath! Let me know in the comments below what you think and if you managed to buy one?!



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Wednesday 16 August 2017

Zoella Beauty: Jelly & Gelato Range

Hey everyone :)


I was on holiday when Zoella (Zoe Sugg) brought out her new range. However I got the email from Superdrug with a 25% off introductory offer and couldn't resist buying the entire range (well bar the clutch bag).

Now I'm a sucker for pastel colours, and fruity scents so this new range was right up my street. Now I would say that the entire range is more marketed towards teen girls ... but considering Zoella's channel is marketed towards that same demographic it's no surprise.

The entire scent is themed with pomegranate and elderflower - which is a very fruity scent. When I first smelt it - I actually thought it was a peachy/mango smell but I was wrong but the scent is still AMAZING!


There are 8 new items in the range:

Zoella Gelato Bath Wafers
This is a pink block that snaps in two diagonally to mimic wafers. You can either use the entire thing in one bath or you can keep half for another bath. I used the whole block and the bath smelt amazing.

Zoella Gelato Shower Shake
This is a thick creamy yellow body wash that moistures as you wash too. It's very thick and I would recommend using a sponge or body poof as if you just smear it over you it tends to take a good rub under the water to get it off.

Zoella Gelato Bath Milk
You get a few packets of powder in a lovely lilac pastel tin. Once you've ran your bath you can just sprinkle one of the packets over the water and give the water a swish/swirl to mix it in.

Zoella Gelato Body Pudding
One of my favourite products - it's a creamy lotion that has little red beads that dissolve when you massage it into your body. It's not a greasy lotion and it leaves a lovely smell on your skin.

Zoella Gelato Cream Body Scrub
An odd bees wax yellow body scrub. I wouldn't really say its a "cream scrub" like the name suggests. It's very sticky but that doesn't really matter when your in the shower and can wash it off. It does leave your body nice and smooth.

Zoella Gelat'Eau Body Mist
Gotta love a body mist ... at first I thought it was an air freshener for the room. But it smells great on me and my work colleagues have commented that its a lovely sweet scent but not too sickly. The only thing I would comment on is that the spray does shoot a load out so it tends to dampen your clothes if you spray it on. It's not really a spray more like a spurt.

Zoella Gelato Shower Sauce
A fancy word 'sauce' for shower gel. It's a lovely pink colour and has subtle hints of elderflower and pomegranate. It's very foamy and I much prefer this to the shower shake.

Zoella Gelato Beauty Clutch
As I mentioned previously in the post - I didn't purchase this as I obviously don't need a clutch and it's more for girls than guys. So no comment!!


Overall I'm very impressed with Zoe's new range and would definitely buy the body mist and the body pudding again. Have you bought anything from the range? Let me know in the comments below.










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Friday 11 August 2017

Summoners War: Sky Arena

Hey everyone :)


Last year I was working in Coventry and one of my colleagues from Hemel Hempstead came to the depot for a couple of weeks and he was playing the above game: "Summoner's War". At first I wasn't interested and then I saw what it was and thought I'd give it a chance and 7 months later here we are!

The game was developed by South Korean game developer, Com2Us. It is a mobile turn-based strategy MMO. You summon monsters, level them up, rune them with magical runes and use them to fight in scenarios and dungeons.

On the outside the game seems just like levelling and fighting but its so much more. As I mentioned you start with the scenarios and you can follow the little story woven into the scenarios. Then the dungeons open, their is the tower of ascension, there is raiding, world bosses to fight. You can also join a guild too and play with friends you know in real life (if they play it) or friends online.

This game will take up lots of your time but it's fun and something you can have on in the background while you do other things. There is an "auto-battle" mode!

If you play the game - please let me know in the comments and I'll add you as a friend :)



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Wednesday 19 July 2017

Cupcake Jemma: Neapolitan Cupcakes

Hi everyone :)


So I'm a big fan of ice cream and especially different flavours together. Vanilla, strawberry and chocolate are some of my favourite flavours so when I saw Cupcake Jemma's recipe for Neapolitan cupcakes I just had to make them :)

Ingredients (chocolate base layer):
200g bourbon chocolate biscuits
50g melted butter
1 tbsp golden syrup

Ingredients: (vanilla second layer):
125g self-raising flour
125g caster sugar
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
125g unsalted butter, soft
2 large free range eggs
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tbsp whole milk

Ingredients (strawberry buttercream top layer):
200g unsalted butter, soft
450g sifted icing sugar
6-8 tbsp strawberry jam, seedless and smooth

Method:
1. Pop the bourbon biscuits into a food processor and buzz until fine crumbs (or just put in a sandwich bag and bash with a wooden rolling pin until crumbs).
2. Add the bourbon biscuits crumbs, the melted butter and the golden syrup into a bowl and mix until combined. Spoon 1 tbsp of the mixture into 12 liners in a cupcake tray and press down with your fingers or a 1/2 cup measuring spoon as this fits perfectly. Leave to one side.
3. Using a stand mixer - in the bowl add the flour, caster sugar, bicarbonate of soda, butter and the 2 eggs. Mix for about a minute on medium so that all the ingredients are combined and you have a golden yellow batter. Slow the mixer down and add the vanilla and milk and beat for another 15-30 seconds until combined.
4. Spoon a ping pong sized ball of mixture onto each biscuit layer. Bake at 170℃ for 20-22 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when pressed into the centre. Let the cakes cool completely before doing anything else.
5. Using the stand mixer again add the butter to the bowl and beat on medium to high for about 5 minutes until its gone nice and pale.
6. Stop the mixer and add half of the icing sugar. Beat again for another 5 minutes. Stop and add the last of the icing sugar and beat again for another 5 minutes. You should end up with pale, white, fluffy buttercream.
7. At the the time of the recipe strawberries were not in season so Jemma used a high-fruit content strawberry jam (I found it in Tesco). Just whizz it in a food processor to make it smooth. You can sieve it too if you don't want seeds in it.
8. With the mixer of slow - add as much or as little jam as you want to colour and flavour the icing. Jemma added around 6-8 tbsp of jam. I think I added around 4 tbsp.
9. Optional: Because of the amount of icing vs jam - the icing will go a pale pink - Jemma did colour her first batch of cupcakes with pink food colouring to get a really vibrant pink colour - but the choice is yours. Pale pink is just as good :)
10. Decorate your cupcakes with wafers like Jemma or I forgot to buy them so I just decorated with some leftover jam I had.





Let me know in the comments below what your favourite flavour of ice cream is ... or cupcake for that matter!!



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Wednesday 12 July 2017

Mary Berry's 'One Step Ahead'

Hey everyone :)

Hope you are doing well ... it's a lovely warm sunny day in England ... and I suppose I should go out and enjoy it as we don't really get many ...

I managed to pick up another Mary Berry book last week and it's taken me ages to take some pictures. For those of you who don't know I am a big Mary Berry fan and I love her recipes!!







I've picked out a couple of my favourite recipes - the "italian meatballs" and the "lemon fudge cake" - both great, easy and scrumptious recipes!

Have you bought this book and have you made any recipes from it? Let me know in the comments below.



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Monday 26 June 2017

Cupcake Jemma: Vanilla Cupcakes and Vanilla Buttercream Rainbow Ed.

Hey everyone :)


I do love baking and today lots of catering equipment I ordered came so I was in a mood to bake! I also organised my entire baking cupboard and I am really happy with it!!

Now I have made this recipe before and it's Cupcake Jemma's recipe (for those of you who don't know she makes amazing cupcakes/cakes- she also has a YouTube channel and a shop "Crumbs & Doilies" in London.

Instead of just using plain vanilla icing and because we're getting near Pride - I thought I'd jazz it up a bit with some rainbow colours. Now I used food colouring paste (which is really strong and a little goes a long way), I find using food colouring that you need to use a lot and its very watery and this makes your buttercream runny too which isn't good. I bought my pastes online for about £5 I think it was Amazon I got them from. You can also get them from Lakeland too (which is like a food/catering shop in the UK).

Now on with the recipe:

Ingredients (cupcake batter):
125g self raising flour
125g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
125g soft, unsalted butter (very soft!!)
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tbsp milk
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 170°C and line a cupcake/muffin tray with 12 cases.
2. In a sieve over the mixing bowl - add the flour, caster sugar and bicarbonate of soda and sift them.
3. Add 125g of butter.
4. Add 2 large eggs.
5. Start the mixer on a low speed until everything is just mixed and then turn up to medium to high for 1 minute.
6. With the mixer on a low speed add the milk and vanilla extract.
7. Put the mixer back up to medium to high speed for one last blast (about 30 seconds).
8. Stop the mixer, remove the paddle and get as much batter off as you can. Scrape the sides with a spatula and give a final mix with the spatula to catch anything missed by the paddle at the bottom.
9. Using a dessert spoon and teaspoon scoop the batter into the cupcake cases
10. Bake for 22 minutes in the pre-heated oven. Check with a skewer - it should come out clean.
11. Leave in tray for 5-10 minutes and then transfer to a wire cooling rack.


Ingredients (buttercream icing):
200g very, very soft butter
450g sifted icing sugar
2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
food colouring paste

Method:
1. Add the butter to a mixer and beat for 5 minutes on a medium to fast speed.
2. The butter should now look very pale (edging on white) and be fluffy.
3. Add half the icing sugar to the bowl with the butter and start the mixer on a low speed.
4. Once its incorporated turn the mixer up to medium speed and beat for 2-3 minutes.
5. Add the last half of the icing sugar and again start on slow, then once mixed together, increase speed to medium and beat for another 2-3 minutes.
6. Turn down to a low speed and add the milk and vanilla extract.
7. Turn back up to a high speed for 1-2 minutes.
8. Divide the mixture evenly between 3-4 bowls
9. Using a cocktail stick get some food colouring paste - with the colour of your choice and add each colour to each bowl and mix until you have the desired colour.
10. Get the piping bag, pop your nozzle in and cut the end off and then 'splodge' each colour down one side of the bag (warning: this gets messy and fiddly).
11. Pipe away ...



Now depending on what colour you splodged first the first couple of cupcakes may just be one colour with a hint of another - I had a few yellow ones before the other colours started to come through - but still they looked great!

I do think my icing could have been a bit softer - this is easy to fix and just requires a little bit of milk - or more milk if you added it when mixing the buttercream up.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.


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Monday 5 June 2017

Elgato Game Capture HD 60 S

Hey everyone :)


A year or so ago I started two YouTube channels - yes two!! However I think I bought off more than I could chew - I had two channels, a full-time job and a blog and that left little to no social life. So I cut the gaming channel out (it was mainly Minecraft) and decided to focus on my main channel and my blog. Work has now calmed down that I can now devote more time to another activity and I really do miss gaming and chatting away - so (as you can probably guess by the title) I bought myself an Elgato.

I'm really excited because this amazing (tiny) piece of equipment will let me record footage like PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and I think PC too.


At the time of writing this post (Sat 27th May) - the device itself cost £169.95 from Amazon UK. The device itself is no bigger than my hand and looks pretty sleek too - so it doesn't look horrible sitting behind/on top of your console.

You also get a HDMI to HDMI cable in the box and a USB 3.0 Type-C to USB. The good thing about the HDMI cable is that its short and that's a good thing because who likes lots of cables and mess behind their screens/consoles.




The device boasts the following:

Instant Gameview - stream with superior low latency technology
1080p / 60fps - stunning quality
Build-in Editor - immediate access and sharing
Stream Command - add webcam, overlays and more
Flashback Recording - record retroactively
Live Commentary - add your voice

The software for the capture can be dowloaded directly from Elgato's website - it's not a big file (which I found surprising) and installs within minutes. I did install it on my iMAC and it keeps telling me - it's not compatible because I need one dedicated GPU - but I've had no issues recording so not sure what that is about. I think most people use PCs but iMACs do work if you were wondering.



The device is really easy to "install" - all you are doing is putting it in the middle of the monitor and the PS4. You remove your HDMI cable from the back of the PS4 and plug this into the OUT HDMI port. You then take the HDMI cable you got (the shorter one) and plug this into the IN HDMI port and the other side in the back of the PS4. You then take the USB 3.0 Type-C and plug this into the device and the USB side into the back of your PC/iMAC.

Download the software, or if you have done that already - launch it. The software should auto-detect the Elgato and the console screen will appear on the software. If you are using PS4 - you may need to go to settings and disable HDCP before it will work.

You can then start recording or streaming ... so far I have recorded two videos of a new game I am playing "Rime" and the quality is breathtaking - I am very impressed!!



Let me know if the comments if you have bought an Elgato and if you have a gaming channel or if you stream - I'd love to check you out.




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